NC is not underpowered.

Non moving and burst firing, aren't you the favorite target of snipers? My experience are quite different. VS are strong at long range and short range, maybe not so much at medium range. I played all three factions extensively got 26 ranks on VS, 20 on NC, and 46 on TR.
What's amazing about VS weapon is its steadiness, which makes long range full auto very manageable. And this Polaris LMG is a beast in close range and medium range combat. VS guns also have its reputation for fast reload time. The only downside of VS weapon is that when you use the x1, x2, x3.4 scopes, you might have problem seeing things through your own gun fire. x6 scope however doesn't have that problem. combined with its air and tank superiority they were dominating the across servers challenges for UES.
NC guns are good at medium range. For long range the high recoil make things kinda difficult for me. NC guns are not very good at close combat, of course we are not counting shotguns. But then NC has this way overpowered duo shotguns Max, which dropped my full HP TR max in one magazine, while I barely had a chance to lay some scratches on him. NC Max spam in bio lab is almost unstoppable, they totally dominate any in building engagements.

TR weapons need 1 more bullet to kill than the NC 167dmg ones. But you get a much higher RoF and higher RoF means that your opponent cant hit you nearly as much. Thats why damage is no where near as good as high RoF in CQC. And all of the NC high RoF weapons are inferior to the ones of the TR. So NC is only stronger in mid-long range combat. And those 40 round magazines of yours are a HUGE advantage in close combat.

The massive flinch that your character does when they get hit is what is unfair for the NC. On average, the RoF of VS and TR weapons are much higher, so they just need to spray in the general direction of an NC player once the NC player has engaged them. Once the NC player is hit by a stray round, the flinch throws the accuracy off and the battle tips into the favor of the high RoF weapon as they can continue to spray with less recoil and more bullets than the NC weapon.

The NC weapons would be fine if the slightest touch didn't make your character flinch so badly. Both rocks on the ground that you run over, and bullets make the character flinch. WIth a slow, steady rate of fire, this is an issue. NC weapons need to be continually aimed well if they want to hit as hard as the TR or VS weapons can over the same period of time.

I cannot tell you how many times I've engaged a TR or VS only for them to hit me once, completely throw my aim off, and then beat me with their much superior RoF.

Just remove flinching from this game completely. It's insane and really hurts low RoF weaponry.

I'm not going to start a flame/troll war, but I play NC (HA) 99% of the time. I didn't believe all the hype and gripe over NC weapons vs. The other two. In some down time I decided to give VS a shot (since I played VS in PS1). I rolled a HA of course. In about 1.5 hours of simply running and gunning, without spending 1 cert in anything, with the stock VS HA gear I went 64-23 and achieved BR 6. Sure I was following some other players around and getting XP from base caps too, and got a ton assist kills XP. But, in the long run, I am not going to say it was "easier." That's not the word for it. I will say that I could conduct my play-style in a completely different manner than when on my NC character and feel like I was being more effective.

Now I have taken a bit of what I learned in my short time playing VS HA and tried to apply it to NC, and it has worked a bit better for me.

I will give a TR toon the same treatment eventually as well just to see out of curiosity.

Like I said, I am not going to say one faction is easier than another to play, I feel that has more to do with being in the larger force or more organized and dominant faction, but so far it feels like the different factions require adjustments and tweaks to personal play-styles.

Higher recoil = higher flinch, I play VS as my main and I only get screwed by Flinch when using guns like the Flare and the SVA-88, both have NC levels of recoil. TR typically don't have much recoil on their guns, for me 0.4 is the magic number, first shot recoil matters but not so much for flinch, above 0.4 I feel it, below 0.4 it varies from mild annoyance to not noticeable.

So TR have 4 weapons with a recoil value higher than 4, the Carv-S and the TMG-50 and both the pistols, Repeater and Emperor. VS have 5, both pistols again, Beamer and Manticore, 2 LMGs, SVA-88 and Flare and one Carbine, the Pulsar C.

Finally we come to NC... 8, 3 LMGs, 2 Carbines, 1 AR and both Pistols. If you take the Pistols out of the equation, we leave ourselves with TR 2, VS 3 and NC 6. Now factor in that getting hit by a bullet gives you flinch, so the more bullets hitting you the more flinch you feel, so high ROF makes the enemy flinch more and high recoil exaggerates the effect of flinch, so who don't have many (or in the case of LMGs any) high ROF weapons? The NC. So when it comes to flinch, the NC get the sharp end of the whip, they have more guns that make them feel it, they have less guns that can dish it out.

Changing the flinch degree based on the damage of the bullet hitting you would be amazing, it'd mean getting hit by a SAW would feel like getting hit by something hefty, where as getting hit by an MSW-R for example will do a lot of damage very quickly, but not make your aim jerk all over the place, this would narrow down the gap between the heavy hitters and the spray and prey machines that we currently see in the game created by a mixture of TTK and flinch at short range giving the spray and prey machines a massive CQC advantage.

NC infantry stuff isn't underpowered. Correct.

It is extremely good infact... But only for someone who is more experienced. If someone who is new to the game or is less experienced with FPS games in general starts an NC character, they will find it to be a little bit like trying to shoot at a wasp with a howitzer.

However, if you know how to grab a quick few hundred cert points, and invest a little into the infantry guns, suddenly they become excellent, and sit on a par with TR gear. This is just an issue with the starting guns being a rather poor choice. TR and Vanu gear is much better suited to use "right out of the box" and therefore the newer players on the VS or TR sides are more able to kill the newer players on the NC side.

The Reaver is inferior to the Scythe and Mosquito. It is harder to hit things with aReaver and harder to fling it around in anything like a controlled manner.

The flinch mechanic generally hurts lower RoF gun users more than higher RoF gun users. This is only an issue in close quarters combat or in situations where yourself and your target start shooting one another at the same time.

DPS.

This is a slightly more complex issue. Theoretical DPS is a very different thing to actual DPS.
Lower rate of fire guns may potentially have the same or higher DPS than higher RPM guns. However it suffers from "all your eggs in one basket" syndrome.

Lets assume there is a high damage/low RMP gun and a low damage high RPM gun with equal overall DPS.

A lower damage/higher RPM gun user fires at a target and misses one or two shots from their burst.

At the same time, a higher damage/lower RPM fires a burst on a different target, and misses one or two shots.

The DPS penalty suffered by the lower damage/higher RPM gun for missing a shot, is lower than that of the higher damage/lower RPM gun for missing the same number of shots, as each shot missed by the lower RMP gun counts for more damage.

Therefore, lower RoF guns favour those people who have better accuracy. Those wth less experience will find them far harder to use. Note... Harder to use, not "better" or "worse".

Another result of this lower RMP DPS penalty is the flinch mechanic effect on it. The flinch mechanic generally hurts lower RoF gun users more than higher RoF gun users as a result of the increased missing penalty described above. This is only an issue in close quarters combat or in situations where yourself and your target start shooting one another at the same time.


I play predominantly NC on Mallory server. I also have a TR on Miller.

Personally I think all they need to do with the Reaver is give it a slight armour buff and fix the aim issues, when I fly it it flies fine, shame it's hard to hit stuff and it has such a fat backside.

I would agree 100% that TR and NC are rather balanced. ESF aside........ The scorecard of this event did show that there is obviously something wrong with the VS. they had 6 servers go 3-0.....somethign smells fishy. Only other faction to do that was Genudine NC (thats just because we are beast!)

NC isn't underpowered once you start replacing default infantry weapons.

VS is OP from the moment you log on

Good that OHK starting sniper is NC, then
Honestly, no, sniper are far from my main predator.

If you hear the tank then it stays in the first...dont know the word. 1. drive instead of going 2. or 3. drive. You can change this manualy by pressing w and then pressing w again. Voila. Maxspeed.

I mainly play infantry and my NC and VS have nearly identical K/D ratios. I do certainly notice flinch more with NC but I think I have learned to compensate as well. It probably also helps that I tend to aim center mass instead of being a headhunter like a lot of people.

"gear" is the word you're looking for
You mean you can manually change gear by releasing and pressing W again? oO
And it makes a VG accelerate better?

My stats with NC are actually better than with TR...

My experience with NC:

- Recoil is horrible but the guns really pack a punch when/if you hit with them
- Forward grips alleviates this greatly. It's not hard to kill people with NC guns. I use forward grip on all guns anyway except on my troll light assault and medic who spam smoke grenades.
- I like the handling on reaver although the gun offset takes some time to get used to if you've been on VS
- Vanguard secondary gun needs increased projectile velocity. TR and VS have very high velocity secondary AV gun, NC have slow launcher.
- Vanguard damage is massive but the early acceleration is god awful. Sure feels like behemoth tank but is it intended?

I play a ton of TR and NC myself. I do think they're actually pretty well balanced, if you dig deeper and ignore the whining from both sides. But NC are in the end, short changed. Here's why...


Infantry

The NC gets the GD-7F which beats any carbine the TR LA/engie can field, plus engies have bouncing betties which are tons easier to use than Claymores. Infiltrators are all on par when they get the best options - RAMS/Longshot. You get weapons like the GR-22 and Gauss SAW as NC medics, plus a ton of medics use the all faction NS-11. TR has the HA advantage, NC has the MAX advantage. NC MAX over TR MAX is a smaller gap than TR HA over NC HA though.

TL;DR - NC infantry is not weak, except for Heavy Assault. NC MAX balances this out. Betties and the GD-7F allow NC engies to outclass TR ones.


MBT

The Vanny/Prowler are different, but both are just outclassed entirely by Mags. SOE has already acknowledged this and is preparing upgrades for both NC/TR MBTs. But... the Enforcer is crap compared to the Vulcan, and the Vulcan while a beast in the right hands, just totally lacks the ease of use and versatility of the eye of doom Saron. VS > TR > NC is the current MBT balance, with the Prowler/Vanny gap mainly due to its unique secondaries being much less desirable on the NC side.

TL;DR - Given unique secondaries, Vulcan > Enforcer, TR > NC. Mags win over both.


ESF

This is just utter nonsense. I fly the Reaver and Mossy a lot these days, and the difference is just night and day. The Reaver is just a steaming pile of flying metal totally outclassed by the Mosquito and Scythes.

TL;DR - Reaver is just a flying hunk of metal, VS/TR >>> NC


Aside from the huge ESF imbalance, I think TR/NC are pretty well balanced against each other. Of course TR MAX and NC HAs might still complain to no end.

Please please please buff the AC-X11 in damage or something... Low mag size, very inaccurate at range, crazy recoil, and impossible to hipfire. Something has to improve! Way off topic in this post, but that gun is on the brink of being a decent gun. I want to like it soooo bad. The 6X Scope is pretty much useless on it.

And give the Max Longshot X2, except they're semi automatic. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat...

Whoa wait, the AC-X11 is my BEST weapon as well as the Reaper DMR on my NC alt, it does 200-143 damage and it's better at range because of the high damage at dropoff. Are you kidding?

do you really think your personal k/d for both factions is at all telling on the state of balance? Gotta love those comments, its called SSS (Small Sample Size)

Compared to how quickly I get shredded against Medics/TR/HA's at range, the recoil preventing a quick second shot, and the small clip size, I am not kidding.

I really enjoy the gun at short to just into medium range. It's my weapon of choice as LA. Anything beyond that, it' a tough gun to use when up against a Trac5, Lynx/Jaguar, or some of the comparable Vanu weaps. My suckiness probably has something to do with it, but I have difficulty at range against other LA/HA/Medic units.